Excuses, excuses, excuses
by Mad Dog

About the only excuses they didn’t use were “The dog ate our flight plan” and “I thought we were supposed to read Chapter 10 of the 747 flight manual, not Chapter 14.”

    We tried to be patient—after all, it’s bad form to be arrested for air rage before you even leave the ground—listening to one excuse after the other being offered by this unnamed airline. (Hint: It begins with a “U”, ends in a “d”, is an anagram for untied, and isn’t Delta.) I have to say, they were some of the most creative excuses since the producers of the Rocky and Bullwinkle movie pleaded not to have to return their salaries to the movie studio.

    First we had to wait while the pilot and co-pilot arrived on a flight from Washington, D.C. where they’d been delayed by bad weather. Once on board they discovered the radio wouldn’t work so they had to get it repaired. No sooner was it fixed than the flight attendants realized it was past their shift time and a new flight crew had to be found. About the only excuses they didn’t use were “The dog ate our flight plan”, “I thought we were supposed to read Chapter 10 of the 747 flight manual, not Chapter 14”, and “Oral sex isn’t sexual intercourse.” Then again, pilots aren’t hired for their creativity.

    It’s actually much easier to accept the straight truth than it is a lame excuse. George Washington understood that when he confessed to chopping down the cherry tree. He could just as easily have said Richard Nixon did it and everyone would have believed him. After all, who has the more honest face? But he didn’t. He confessed, took his punishment, and grew up to be President.

    Nowadays people don’t feel that same compelling need to tell the truth, which may be one of the reasons a recent poll showed that only 40% of kids want to follow in George Washington’s footsteps while 56% would rather be a CEO. Of course they probably think CEO means Cheating at Every Opportunity and don’t realize that holds for being president too.

    We first learn to make excuses as children. We do this because parents don’t want to know the truth. If you say you ate the whole package of cookies you’ll never even smell another one until you’re sixteen and can blow the money you made selling drugs on anything you damn well please. If you confess to having broken the cut glass relish dish you know you’ll be sent to bed without dinner. And if you tell your parents you stuck a pin in those rolled up balloons they keep in the night stand because you were angry that you didn’t get dinner, they’re liable to hand you a bill for the cost of sending that brother they didn’t intend for you to have to college for five and a half years.

    One rule of excuses is that they have to be somewhat believable. A while back Thomas Story of Santa Ana, California told a jury that he stabbed his wife 25 times in the back to make it look like murder because he didn’t want his son to go through life stigmatized by the idea that his mother had committed suicide. Wisely the jury didn’t buy the excuse. In Japan the government waited nine years to approve the use of birth control pills for contraception, this in spite of taking only six months to allow Viagra to be prescribed. Their excuse was that they were afraid widespread use of birth control pills would bring about the destruction of the nation’s morals. This coming from the country that brought us Pokémon, karaoke, Tamagotchi, and Hello Kitty.

    Another rule of excuses is that you can’t use the same one too often. I once worked at a place where a female employee took several days off at the onset of her menstrual period because of extreme cramps. This was no problem until the general manager noticed she was doing this every 14 days. This, like having six grandmothers who take turns dying when it’s time to go in for your I.R.S. audit, shows that there can be too much of a good excuse. On the other hand, your dog having eaten all the airline executives is another thing altogether. Good dog! Good dog!

©2000 Mad Dog Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
These columns appear in better newspapers across the country. Quit making up excuses and read them.